A new project involving 1200 residential units and a sports centre has been announced at the Namur‑Hippodrome site.
Updates from July, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
CTV has some images of how Place des Arts will look, and also the MAC, in the infinitely receding future of 2028.
I don’t see how what’s replacing both the old entrance on Ste‑Catherine and the one from ~2010 with the tilted roof, which has just been demolished, is outstandingly better. The tilted roof version was a bit too consciously jazzy, I suppose, a visual mismatch for the blocky brutalism of the rest of the complex? Maybe too Expo 67?
EmilyG
I never knew that that building is called the Theatre Building. I guess I mostly thought of it as being called Place des Arts, and also an entrance to Complexe Desjardins.
qatzelok
The 2010 entrance was an improvement in that it made it easier to find the main entrance.
But it was a cheap copy of something that Daniel Libeskind would have created. And, as Kate says, doesn’t match the blockiness of the complex.
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Kate
Le Devoir marks the 50th anniversary of Complexe Desjardins with some fulsome prose about national pride.
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Kate
CTV looks into why the Oka‑Hudson ferry is down this summer.
Ian
I was wondering about that, I thought it was because of high water at first but last time I was in Oka the ferry was still out.
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Kate
La Presse prioritizes the headline correctly – Air Canada has chosen a new top honcho and HE SPEAKS FRENCH!!
Ricardo
what a scene.
Blork
FFS he’s not even Canadian and he looks like an A.I. rendering of Pierre Trudeau.
Ian
I love that the only defining aspect of cultural preservation is now language. It’s a frickin’ CEO. He doesn’t give a shit about your culture, or anyone’s, he runs a publicly traded company. He cares about margins, the board, and perceived value to investors This is corporate capitalism, get real.
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Kate
Residents in St‑Léonard are demanding flood protection, and some in Pierrefonds‑Roxboro and the city of D.D.O. want to launch class‑action lawsuits over the same issue. Off island, Chateauguay residents are also steamed up about flooding.
Joey
Good thing we’ve spent the last five decades arguing about whether climate change is real and not preparing for its impacts. It would be interesting to see polling to determine what proportion of the population still thinks the effects of climate change remain in the future, and are not occurring right now. The impression from the residents interviewed by CTV (the video is more revealing than the write-up, IMO) is that the city is just negligent, stupid, unfeeling, etc. And while that may be partially true, you don’t get the impression that they accept that we are just way too late to mitigate the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change. Like, if you said to the Saint-Leonard Citizens’ Committee that in addition to some kind of flood protection (I wouldn’t assume this neighbourhood is eager for sponge parks, but you never know) we would have to quickly transition to electric vehicles and severely ration air travel, how do you think they would react? Maybe more accurately – that there’s actually nothing we can do to prevent flooding in flood planes (hello DDO/Pierrefonds), and that we will have to concentrate our preventative efforts in areas that have not – yet – been affected by flooding. How would that go over?
When temperatures hit mid-forties in Europe last week, I wondered how likely it is that the Alto rails will melt before they can ever be fully used. I fear almost all of policy/political debate energy is very quickly going to be entirely about mitigating the effects of climate change. What happens when the southern half of North America becomes uninhabitable? When disaster start stacking up such that we just can’t clean them up? If Katrina hit in 2026 and 2006, would we be more likely to abandon the concept to rebuilding New Orleans?
Anyway, the one thing basically all the politicians of all the parties that are in power in this country agree on is that we need more pipelines…
su
These folks are just externalities in the GDP growth infinitum equation of climate inaction.
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Kate
While they were telling us about the memorial to Mohamed Benredouane, our media have also been reporting on the trial of police officer Philippe Paquette for attacking Charly Say, a patron at Chez Parée, and for falsely accusing Say of assault in turn.
roberto
I imagine all the Chez Parée was full yesterday evening….
Nicholas 21:07 on 2026-07-08 Permalink
Looks fine, like the last plan and the plan before that and…. At least they have set a two-year timeline for this part of the project, so we can see results (or lack thereof) before the next election. I hope we finally get some action.
Kate 09:47 on 2026-07-09 Permalink
Radio-Canada notes that the project will have no social housing.
Tim S. 10:09 on 2026-07-09 Permalink
It seems a bit cheap to have a sports complex that doesn’t include a pool or ice rink, but I guess we have to start somewhere.
Joey 13:05 on 2026-07-09 Permalink
Mental note to come back and see what eventually gets built. My hunch is fewer than however many units they’re promising and a significantly scaled back set of ancillary things like a gym, etc. Have those Griffintown schools we were talking about 20 years+ ago been built?
Kate 14:17 on 2026-07-09 Permalink
No school has yet been built in Griffintown. This piece dates from 2023, but I find nothing more recent.
Nicholas 14:58 on 2026-07-09 Permalink
Joey, someone who lives in the neighbourhood said a lot owner offered to let the CSDM build a school on the bottom two/three floors and there would be housing on top, with a schoolyard on the roof accessed by a private elevator for the school, with the school entrance on one side of the building and the housing on the other. Everyone was game, including the city and CSDM, but at the last minute the CSDM balked, saying they don’t do such projects. So here we are, years later, no school.
Kate, I would note that the current site is a two-storey light office building with no social housing either, even though it’s steps from the metro. As for the Blue Bonnets site, it became city-owned in 2017 and has so far produced zero housing and even zero construction. Plans are great, but plans with no construction for eight years are less so. We see this again and again, with complicated structures to try to produce social or affordable or whatever housing that actual produce nothing but plans. The closed Blue Bonnets site will be old enough to drink next year.
Kate 18:44 on 2026-07-09 Permalink
Ah yes. “Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien.”